Diablo 3 Patch Monster Changes: Reflects Damage

Posted By: January 17, 2013

Aside from all the new crafting recipes, one of the most awaited-changes in Diablo 3 patch v1.07 is the nerf/change to how the Reflects Damage monster modifier works. The official description goes thusly:

The Reflects Damage affix has been redesigned:

It will now apply a short duration buff to the monster and will only reflect a percentage of damage dealt back to the player while that buff is active.

A visual effect will display whenever the durational buff is active.

Damage dealt by pets to monster with Reflects Damage affix will no longer be reflected back to the player.

This info seems to be correct based on my testing thus far, but I’m not the best one to speak about it, since my two main chars of late don’t find the affix very impactful.

Beware the tiny swords.

My Monk was originally built for MP5 key runs and while I’ve lately repurposed him to more general MP1 or MP2 farming, he’s still skewed way towards the EHP end of the survival continuum and thus he does not take visible injury from Reflects Damage. (Especially since the version of my characters the PTR copied over is from last weekend, and my Monk is thus missing several new DPS-boosting item upgrades I acquired on Tuesday.)

My other main char (of late) is a Demon Hunter, and she doesn’t have any problem with RD either, since any pre-v1.07 RD encounter has a binary result. Either she gets Gloom active before her first volley of shots hits the boss and cruises through, or she doesn’t get Gloom active and dies in an instant. There’s not much in between, really.

So, playing on the PTR my Monk hasn’t noticed any difference from Reflects Damage other than the visual, and often not even that since it’s far from noticeable enough. The visual is a bunch of orange swords swirling and orbiting around the monster and moving a bit like sparks of light coming off of a rotating disco ball.

Two things about these screenehots. 1) I took several shots of each encounter and the ones in this post had RD the *most* visible. 2) I took these while standing back to get a clear view. While actually playing it’s much harder to pick up, especially if you’re using big flashy visual skills, like um… all of them, really.

The RD visual is okay on dark levels, like the endless staircase levels of Act Three, but on brighter levels it’s much harder to see. I got it on a Golgor unique tonight while playing my Monk, and literally didn’t notice it on the boss, since the little swords blended into his huge bright-yellow belly. Only when he was dead and exploded and I’d moved on to slaughtering his minions did it notice it around one of them.

Reflects Damage.

Reflects Damage.

Reflects Damage.

So my take on the new Reflects Damage after seeing it in-game on maybe a dozen bosses so far. I think the “fix” to the mechanic is okay. It doesn’t totally nerf the property and characters who want to go full on glass cannon should still find it dangerous. (And those almost the only players who were dying so fast and complaining so loudly anyway.) But, I think the graphic is *much* too subtle and doesn’t serve the intended purpose of providing a clear warning of the danger of RD. The orange swords blend into the glowing aura ground effect, they hardly show up on bright levels or around some bright monsters, etc.

Furthermore, the mechanic conspires to make the effect harder to notice since there’s nothing visible around the monsters that aren’t currently flashing the RD effect. There needs to be a much more visible graphic, and something to demarcate monsters that aren’t currently active with it, but may be soon. Good start and good idea, but the execution needs some work. Which is fine; it’s on the PTR for a reason, after all.

Always on reflects damage is a stupid affix. Either you pass the armor, resist, lifesteal/loh, damage equation or you don’t. There’s nothing interesting about it. All other affixes can be dealt with by moving out of harms way or changing targets (ie shielding).

I think having it toggle on and off is a good start. What would be better is have it scale not so linearly. So if you use a low damage coefficient skill, you get say, 3% reflected. High damage coefficient skills reflect 6%. Damage over time or pet skills reflect 1%. This plus having it toggle would mean a shift from low to high damage abilities, plus shifting targets.

As it is in game now, if you fail the gearcheck or lack that one anti reflect ability on your bar, you simply die. Doesn’t matter what you do, the answer is pure gear + that anti rd skill.

I agree. I like the idea of it turning on and off randomly for mobs in the group so that I’m actively paying attention and switching targets. However, I think they should bump up the damage (assuming it’s the same with roughly fifty percent downtime).

On a side note, I don’t really understand the molten nerf and plague buff. Actively running away from the explosions seems more fun than trying to get away from a room over-filled with plague.

Yeah, I’m fine with the mechanic, and it adds some strategy/skill/reward for paying attention. Basically it’s just Shielding, except it hurts you instead of just wasting your time hitting the shielded one. They just need to upgrade the graphic to make it a lot more obvious when it’s engaged or not.

For once, recycling the depracted ‘Invincible’ shield graphic and simply shifting its color to red would have been ok, really. Amazed to see something new instead –– discarded skill graphic from early developement days, hm, Blizzard? 😉

they should NEVER have touched damage reflect. Does anybody remember the immune to physical monsters in diablo 2? For every build there should be some sort of foil that prevents you from just walking around with everything dying at your feet.

I dont know if you ever played pokemon but it has a great system with weakness and resistances. However i do agree that diablo 2 was all harsher with immunities then diablo 3 where damagetypes don’t mean a thing

With D2 you could easily tell the deadly affixes on monsters that were element-enchanted or had an aura. Enchanted monsters had the elemental graphic when they hit you, with LE also shooting lightning everywhere, and auras were easily visible unless there were multiple auras in which case the graphic alternated.

The problem in D3 is there’s so much visual clutter. The blue/gold glow on elites is maybe too bright. The graphics of molten, frozen, arcane, shield, etc. are all pretty apparent. When a monster has multiple of these affixes, the graphics that make them easy to see become muddled and it’s hard to identify some. They should really tone down the graphic on some affixes like shield, invulnerable minions (was that removed? I forget), and even frozen and plague. The frozen and plague graphics looks really cool, but all we really need is a blue or green circle to show the edge of the affected area. Damage reflection could simply get the same graphics as thorns aura in D2 with it being visible over stuff on the ground.